Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/101

Rh to the cow and the chickens. It would be a holiday for her too. Old John, the man who occasionally worked for us, would come up sometimes and see after things. With her customary dexterity Euphemia swept away every obstacle to the plan, and all was settled before we went to bed.

As my wife had presumed, Pomona made no objections to remaining in charge of the house. The scheme pleased her greatly. So far, so good. I called that day on a friend who was in the habit of camping out to talk to him about getting a tent and the necessary "traps" for a life in the woods. He proved perfectly competent to furnish advice and everything else. He offered to lend me all I needed. He had a complete outfit; had done with them for the year, and I was perfectly welcome. Here was rare luck. He gave me a tent, camp-stove, dishes, pots, gun, fishing-tackle, a big canvas coat with dozens of pockets riveted on it, a canvas hat, rods, reels, boots that came up to my hips, and about a waggon-load of things in all. He was a real good fellow.

We laid in a stock of canned and condensed provisions, and I bought a book on camping-out so as to be well posted on the subject. On the Saturday before the first Monday in September we would have been entirely ready to start had we decided on the place where we were to go.

We found it very difficult to make this decision. There were thousands of places where people went to camp out, but none of them seemed to be the place for us. Most of them were too far away. We figured up the cost of taking ourselves and our camp equipage to the Adirondacks, the lakes, the trout-streams of Maine, or any of those well-known resorts,